Paul Johnston - Page 1
British Pbk Original - Hodder & Stoughton (2003) |
 |
The Last Red Death
Iraklis - a mysterious Greek terrorist group. A rogue offshoot of the Communist Party. At its head, a man with many named. An elusive master assassin who has been in exile for ten years.
Alex Mavros - a half-Greek, half-Scottish investigator. A man driven by the desire to find his missing brother, last heard of at an underground resistance meeting during the dictatorship.
Grace Helmer - an American who saw her father murdered when she was a child. Iraklis was responsible.
Two businessmen are murdered in Athens. The trademark piece of olive wood is found with the victims’ bodies.
Iraklis is back. And Grace Helmer employs Mavros to track down her father’s killer.
From Athens to the mountain roads of the southern mainland, Mavros takes on the hunt, unearthing clues from the past which have left a dangerous legacy in the present. And as Mavros gets closer to his target, he finds himself in a cat-and-mouse game with a group of even more dangerous conspirators.
‘A compelling, carefully crafted, top-notch thriller’ George Pelecanos
‘Johnston brilliantly evokes Greece’s turbulent past and murky present ... a powerful and pacy thriller’ Mark Billingham
|
First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2002) |
|
A Deeper Shade Of Blue
Paul Johnston’s brilliantly conceived novel is the first in a series featuring Greece-based private investigator Alex Mavros.
The idyllic Greek island of Trigono harbours many secrets. Its labyrinth of caves contains priceless ancient figurines. The caves gave sanctuary to tragic lovers during the Second World War. Now they are the backdrop to acts of chilling depravity.
American tourist Rosa Ozal has disappeared and investigator Alex Mavros is hired to trace her. Half-Greek, half-Scots, Mavros is in the perfect position to play the innocent holidaymaker. He is soon to discover that there’s much more going on than meets the eye. Two young islanders have ended up in the nets of a local fishing boat. A British journalist has left Trigono without warning. The resident millionaire and museum owner seems to be very ill at ease. And there are some highly suspicious deals going down in the deep blue waters that surround the island.
In a race to stop a terrible crime being repeated, Alex Mavros must break through Trigono’s whitewashed walls of silence to uncover the deadly consequences of a feud that has plagued the island for generations.
Praise for Paul Johnston
‘Thrilling… accomplished’ Ian Rankin, Scotland on Sunday
‘Fascinating and thought-provoking’ Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
'First-rate crime fiction with an original twist' Sunday Telegraph
'An acclaimed crime series... Johnston brings an intelligent perspective to the dark excitement of the thriller' Nicholas Blincoe, Observer
'An ingenious and chilling thriller that has the added bonus of being a sardonic political satire' The Sunday Times
| Paperback - NEL (2002) |
 |
|
First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2001) |
|
The House Of Dust
It’s April 2028 and independent Edinburgh is facing a mounting crime wave. Youth gangs roam the streets, creating so much havoc that the ruling Council of City Guardians is forced to seek advice. Experts from the utopian university-state of New Oxford recommend an extreme deterrent - a maximum security prison alongside the central tourist zone.
After a reception for representatives from Oxford, the gruesome discovery of a severed arm is made in their luxury accommodation. Maverick investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is called to the scene. Quint already has plenty of problems, his search for the missing chief toxicologist being the most vexing. Then, at the prison opening ceremony, the unthinkable happens - an Edinburgh guardian is shot.
Quint soon gathers evidence linking New Oxford to the assassination. Sent there to close the case, he scratches beneath the glossy hi-tech veneer to find a ruthless administration geared to profit and coercion, and a conspiracy extending to his home city.
The only way to halt that conspiracy is to penetrate New Oxford’s mysterious heart - the place known only as the House of Dust.
Quint Dalrymple’s first investigation outside the former Scotland combines a taut and highly original thriller with pungent political comment.
`In a series of highly original books set a couple of decades in the future, Paul Johnston has created a portrait of the post-Enlightenment city-state of Edinburgh . . . the books are always entertaining, in part because of the unsquashably rebellious personality of Johnston’s maverick sleuth, Quint Dalrymple, and the sardonic humour which enlivens the narrative … another fine example of great storytelling’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Johnston’s plotting is consummate and his characterisation deft. He is also a very funny political satirist so that although The House of Dust is set in the future he is, of course, commenting on Scotland and England today. Very enjoyable’ Peter Guttridge, The Observer
‘Johnston has cleverly developed a series . . . multiplying his options for Swiftian satire by moving his cussed sleuth around the former United Kingdom’ The Sunday Times
‘Johnston’s latest literary stab in the underbelly of contemporary politics has a chilling topicality in its tale of genetically-modified humans and of administrative devolution taken to extremes. It’s also a rattling good thriller.’ Birmingham Sunday Mercury
‘An addictively readable addition to an imaginative and entertaining series.’ Mike Ripley, Birmingham Post
|
First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (2000) |
|
The Blood Tree
See Review by
Cath Staincliffe
- Author of the highly acclaimed Sal Kilkenny Mysteries set on the Mean Streets of Manchester
See Review by
J.O.
Independent Edinburgh - a tourist's paradise, a citizen's paradox. It's 2026. The birth-rate is down in the Council's 'perfect city' and gangs of disaffected kids roam the streets. A break-in at the former Scottish Parliament archive is rapidly followed by two gruesome murders, the victims mutilated and covered with blood-drenched branches.
Under the watchful eyes of the guardians, renegade investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is called in to establish a pattern and to stop the roots of violence spreading.
But Quint's investigation is driven in a different direction when Edinburgh's brightest teenagers are abducted to the much-feared democratic city-state of Glasgow.
What Quint finds there will change his life forever...
Quint Dalrymple faces his toughest case to date in award-winning Johnston's chilling, ingeniously imagined thriller with its wry, topical backdrop.
‘A testy, tenacious detective… a smart move to shift much of the novel to Glasgow’ The Sunday Times
‘Welcome new characters and a change of scenery… this futuristic series is still refreshingly original and entertaining’ Sunday Telegraph
| Paperback - NEL (1999) |
 |
|
First British Edition Hodder & Stoughton (1999) |
|
Water of Death
See Review by
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
Edinburgh, 2025 - an independent, almost crime-free oasis surrounded by anarchic city-states. Except global warming has turned the summer into the Big Heat and water, like everything else, is strictly rationed.
The ruling Council of City Guardians has been forced to become more user-friendly. Citizens now live only for the weekly lottery draw while serving the tourists in the year-round festival. So when a recent lottery winner goes missing, subversive investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is called in to deal with a minor case of the summertime blues.
Then a body is discovered face down in the Water of Leith - the only clue to the death, a bottle of contraband whisky. Quint thinks he sees the first traces of a ruthless conspiracy to destabilise the city.
The Council, increasingly fearful of losing its grip on power, expects Quint to stop the tormentors dead in the water. But he is having serious difficulty distinguishing friend from foe during the Big Heat. Meanwhile the body count, like the temperature, keeps on rising...
'Both prescient and illuminating' Ian Rankin, Daily Telegraph
'Johnston's vision is shot through with the bleakest of black humour, never losing sight of the humanity of his characters. This series is getting better all the time' Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
'A thoroughly enjoyable tale' Sunday Telegraph
'Trendily dystopian' The Herald
'Not only a cracking thriller (with a hugely shocking climax), but a timely one. Johnston's vision of the future is highly entertaining' Ham & High
'Sardonic wit, brilliant concept and a strong plot' Birmingham Post
About The Author
Paul Johnston was born in 1957 in Edinburgh where he grew up. Like Tony Blair, he was educated at Fettes; unlike Tony Blair, he took the opportunity to blow up his old school in his prize-winning first novel, Body Politic.
Paul went to Oxford University and then worked for shipping companies in London, Belgium and Greece. He also worked on a newspaper in Athens. He moved to the small Aegean island of Antiparos in 1989, teaching English to pay the bills while he tried to fulfil a long-held ambition to write fiction. He finds it difficult to analyse his motivation but the fact that his father Ronald Johnston was a successful thriller writer played an important part. What he is sure about is that living away from Scotland helped him to cut through the myths about his homeland. This resulted in his novels' ironic and questioning vision of an independent future Edinburgh ruled by a supposedly benevolent dictatorship.
Paul, who has a twelve year old daughter, returned to Edinburgh in 1995 to do a master's degree. Bewildered by the fact that people experience reading in very different ways, he undertook academic research. Although fascinating, this proved to be too much of a distraction from writing novels.
Paul Johnston became a full-time writer after the critical and commercial success of Body Politic ( won the CWA John Creasey Award for best first novel for 1997) and his subsequent novels The Bone Yard (1998) and Water Of Death (1999), all featuring maverick investigator Quint Dalrymple. Body Politic has been published in the United States to excellent reviews and will soon appear in Germany, Japan, Denmark and Portugal. Paul now divides his time between the UK and Greece. He is an active member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers Association.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
The Last Red Death
(Hodder & Stoughton Pbk,
2003)
Pbk Sep 03
A Deeper Shade Of Blue
(Hodder & Stoughton,
2002)
The House Of Dust
(Hodder & Stoughton,
2001)
NEL Pbk Feb 02
(Quintilian Dalrymple)
The Blood Tree
(Hodder & Stoughton,
2000)
(Quintilian Dalrymple)
Water of Death
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1999)
NEL Pbk Nov 99
(Quintilian Dalrymple)
The Bone Yard
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1998)
NEL Pbk Apr 99
(Quintilian Dalrymple)
Body Politic
(Hodder & Stoughton,
1997)
(Quintilian Dalrymple)
The Last Red Death
WebPage: 
by Paul Johnston
